Lucknow, Oct 2 (IANS) Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) national president Mayawati on Friday targeted the Samajwadi Party (SP), accusing it of practising nepotism and money-driven politics and alleging that the party’s actions contradict its claims of representing socialism and PDA.
Mayawati also questioned the SP’s selection of its Rajya Sabha candidates, Professor Ram Gopal Yadav and Dhanraj Parimal Nathwani. The SP filed nominations for both candidates on September 30 for the biennial Rajya Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh.
In a post on social media platform X, Mayawati said the BSP does not give election tickets to family members, relatives or wealthy individuals, irrespective of whether the election is big or small. Instead, she claimed, the party fields hardworking Ambedkarite activists from poor, middle-class and weaker sections of society.
“The BSP, unlike opposition parties, especially the Samajwadi Party, does not give tickets to family members, relatives, siblings, nephews or close associates, or particularly to big capitalists and wealthy individuals in any election. It does not depend on their financial power. Instead, it nominates hardworking Ambedkarite individuals from poor, middle-class and weaker sections as candidates,” Mayawati said.
She alleged that the BSP’s approach represented politics free from nepotism and money power, while accusing the SP of ‘political pretence and deception’ by presenting itself as a socialist and PDA-based party.
Mayawati said the SP’s decision to renominate Ram Gopal Yadav was another example of what she described as the party’s ‘dual policy’. She referred to him as a close relative of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav.
She also questioned the nomination of Dhanraj Parimal Nathwani as the SP’s second candidate, referring to him as a member of a prominent business family.
Mayawati further claimed that the SP’s third candidate, as in previous elections, could be a candidate who would ‘save face’ despite having little prospect of winning.
“This is the nature of the SP, its PDA and its socialism. The SP needs the votes of the PDA during elections, but its MPs and MLAs are largely elected by members of its own family and big capitalists,” Mayawati said.
She urged voters not to be misled by what she described as the SP’s ‘PDA’ politics.
Mayawati further alleged that the SP had followed a similar political approach in the past and accused the party of maintaining a “dual policy, character and face”.
She appealed to members of the communities she referred to as the ‘Bahujan Samaj’, including Dalits, Adivasis, most backward classes, Muslims and other religious minorities, as well as poor sections of upper-caste communities, to remain ‘alert and cautious’ ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
“In fact, this is nothing new; rather, the SP has always had this kind of dual policy, character, and face, and that is why, especially the poor from upper-caste society and the entire ‘Bahujan Samaj’ — meaning Dalits, Adivasis, most backward classes, Muslims, and other religious minority communities — should now, particularly before the UP Assembly general elections, become fully alert and cautious that their interests lie and are secure only in the Ambedkarite BSP; everything else is nothing but deception,” she said.
–IANS
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